The Role of the Blind
in a Democratic Society

by Dr. Jacobus tenBroek

From
the Editor: Dr. Jacobus tenBroek delivered the following speech at the Andrew
Jackson Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday, July 12, during the first
afternoon session of the 1952 NFB convention. The convention that year concluded
on July 15. The Sunday evening banquet address was broadcast locally on radio
station WSM. Dr. tenBroek’s Saturday afternoon speech, however, was actually
broadcast nationally by NBC. His speech was not listed in the draft agenda,
suggesting that the opportunity to generate a national broadcast developed late
in the preparations for the convention and was available only on Saturday afternoon.
The speech has not been reprinted in many years if ever. It is clearly addressed
to a broad national audience. In parts its message still rings with dismaying
truth. At the same time we can observe places in the social fabric of the nation
in which blind citizens have made clear progress. Here is the speech:

I should like to ask you
to join with me in seeking the answer to what may seem an easy question: Have
the blind the right to a place in the sun—or only to a shelter in the shade?

In more conventional terms,
the subject I shall discuss with you this evening is the role of the blind in
a democratic society. No doubt that sounds like a simple and straightforward
issue, clear enough in its meaning if not in its solution. But I fear that the
appearance of simplicity may be greatly misleading; and so, before proceeding
further, I shall ask you to bear with me while I attempt to clarify the principal
terms involved—the big word "democracy" and that other term "the
blind."

"Democracy" of
course means many things to many people; and no doubt its accents and implications
have altered somewhat over the years. But after a century and a half of living
with the idea and the practice, most Americans would probably agree that whatever
else it may suggest, the essence of democracy consists in four indispensable
guarantees to the individual citizen: the guarantees of liberty, equality, opportunity,
and security. Full membership in a democratic society, that is to say, entitles
the individual to liberty in thought and action, equality of treatment, opportunity
to develop his potentialities, and security against the calamities of fortune
over which he has no effective control. The withholding or withdrawal by society
of any of these fundamental rights from an individual leaves him at best in
a role of probationary membership, of second-class citizenship, and to that
extent refutes the practice and violates the spirit of democracy.
To come quickly to the point: Something more than a quarter of a million Americans
are today denied full membership in their society--restrained in liberty,
forbidden equality, refused opportunity, and threatened in
security—for the reason only that they are blind. Moreover, their tragedy
is heightened by the seeming paradox that this denial of the rights of citizenship
is sanctioned by a society motivated wholly by benevolence and for the most
part unaware of its intolerance.

This brings us squarely
up against the second of our crucial terms: "the blind." What does
it mean? According to Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the word "blind"
means, first of all, "sightless." But it also means (and I quote)
"2. Lacking discernment; unable or unwilling to understand or judge;
as blind to faults. 3. Made without reason or discrimination;
as, a blind choice. 4. Apart from intelligent direction
or control; as, blind chance. 5. Insensible; as a
blind stupor; hence, drunk. 6.... made without knowledge
or guidance or judgment; as, a blind purchase."

The word "blind"
then, like the word "democracy," has many different implications;
but as this list of Webster's so graphically reveals, they are virtually
all implications of inferiority, of incompetence, even of stupidity. Language
habits, as we know, arise simply as a response to our inarticulate thoughts
and feelings; and it is therefore of the greatest significance that society
has come to speak of an unreasoning choice as a "blind" choice, and
an insensible stupor as a "blind" stupor. Unless something is done
to alter drastically the habit of thought which has given rise to these brutal
expressions, it is clear beyond a doubt what the role of the blind must be in
society. It must, in brief, be a role outside society, or at best on
its outer fringe: a role of inferiority and assumed incompetence: the role of
a pariah class.

Such a role for the blind
would, I must confess, represent no radical departure from historical practice.
From time immemorial the blind man has been the object of alternating social
attitudes of rejection and overprotection—the opposite side of the coin of prejudice.
The blind have been overprotected, like lunatics and lepers, because it was
supposed that their disability was synonymous with inability to compete or participate
in the regular channels of social and economic activity. They have been rejected
both as a consequence of this paternalism and of the time-worn superstitions
which equated blindness with evil forces and the wrath of God. In primitive
societies the blind were either cast out as bedeviled or left to die as social
liabilities. Even the high-minded Greeks of classical antiquity found no place
for them in their philosophy of the good life but pronounced them parasites
and condemned them to extinction. Through subsequent centuries, with the growth
of the humanitarian conscience, these overt persecutions were gradually diminished,
and the blind were finally extended the right to live and to be protected. Like
the humane societies which developed during early modern times for the protection
of dumb animals, a variety of benevolent and charitable organizations appeared
in western society for the protection of blind people. This was a substantial
improvement, of course, for the animals and for the blind. They were both assured
of kindness and a home. They were not, and they are not now, assured of independence.

The issue before us, then,
is not whether the blind are deserving of humane treatment; they are getting
that. The issue is whether they are deserving of human treatment—consideration
as normal human beings and full-fledged citizens, with all the rights and responsibilities
which that entails in a democratic society. To many of you it may seem obvious
that the blind have a right to such consideration. I have still to prove that
in fact they are denied this right: that with regard to the crucial four freedoms
of democracy—liberty, equality, opportunity, and security—the nation's blind
are victims of a policy of containment and their efforts to achieve responsibility
remain effectively smothered beneath a tyranny of kindness.

The real deprivation of
blindness, let it be said once for all, lies not in its physical but in its
social effects. The loss of sight by itself is tragedy enough, to be sure, imposing
numerous and stringent limitations upon individual activity and demanding a
far-reaching series of adjustments in every department of life and work. But
such adaptations, however painful, can be successfully if not readily carried
out, and by themselves need never result in permanent isolation and incapacity.
Years of research and demonstration in the field of rehabilitation have established
beyond all possibility of dispute that, given competent guidance and sufficient
opportunity, the person who has lost his sight can once again make rich contributions
to his own well-being and that of his community. Whatever may once have been
thought, there is no longer room for question as to whether the blind man is
competent to care for his personal needs and desires—such routine activities
as traveling alone and shaving unaided. Nor is there any longer possibility
of doubt as to his ability to carry on a normal social life and to take part
in the central activities and affairs of his community. What is still more to
the point, even less question exists today about his capacity to perform successfully
a vast range of jobs in industry, commerce, and the professions.

What prevents the blind
man, then, from practicing the rights and enjoying the fruits of membership
in his society? Quite simply, it is the refusal of his neighbors to take him
at his word and deed; it is the reluctance of the vast majority of Americans
to relinquish their comforting and charitable conception of the blind individual
as not only sightless but helpless, and not only helpless but hopeless. Viewing
him through this ancient stereopticon, they continue to regard him as finally
and permanently disabled despite clear evidence to the contrary; and with the
greatest good will they lead him by the hands off the busy main avenues and
into the sheltered back streets of society.

The consequence of all
this helpfulness—the crowning touch to the tragedy of errors--is that the blind
man himself usually succumbs sooner or later to the attitudes and assumptions
of society, and succumbs to them not merely as a prejudiced practice to which
he must defer but as complete and literal truth. In the typical case the newly
blinded person, continuously in contact with the public stereotype, begins soon
to see himself as others see him—which is to say, as an indigent and a misfit,
unworthy of independence and incapable of normal association. Holding himself
thus in contempt, he will retreat voluntarily to apathy and isolation, almost
as eagerly as society seeks to impose it upon him. He will surrender unconditionally
to the stereotype, on its own terms. He will sell his democratic birthright
for a mess of almshouse pottage.

It will perhaps be objected
at this point that the picture has been overdrawn, that the blind of America
are not any longer condemned to total isolation. For have we not, through our
government, established a variety of welfare and rehabilitation agencies on
both federal and state levels? We have indeed; and because most Americans think
of themselves rightly as both generous and kind, it is commonly assumed that
these public agencies are adequately equipped to handle the needs of the blind.
Most people take it for granted that they are prepared to supply assistance
payments to the economically dependent blind, to aid their clients in adjusting
to a world of darkness, and eventually to rehabilitate them through training
for some type of useful work. But it is precisely at this level, unfortunately,
that we encounter the second real tragedy in the situation of the blind. For
the pervasive social stereotype of blindness as incompetence and inferiority
is accurately reflected in the nation's welfare program. Instead of helping
the blind man to escape the deadly inertia of emotional, social, and economic
isolation, our welfare agencies actually reinforce that isolation. Instead of
assisting him to become psychologically and financially self-reliant, they intensify
his utter dependence on others.

Though destitution is a
poor basis for the difficult task of economic and psycho-social readjustment
of the blind, destitution is made a condition of eligibility for public assistance.
Though economic encouragement by way of an improved standard of living, retention
of reasonable amounts of resources, accumulation of some capital, and income
are necessary to translate a theoretical social interest in rehabilitation into
terms which have meaning and value to the individual, the blind man who is on
public assistance is denied all of these or permitted them in sharply curtailed
and wholly inadequate form.

Though poverty begets only
poverty, stultifies the personality, and stifles ambition, gross material inadequacy
is the rule, the nation over, under a standard of relief which has fallen far
below the cost of living and left the blind ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed.
The means test, glorified into a welfare principle, in the expression "individual
need individually determined," has been integrally associated with the
precarious maintenance of the recipient at the barest level of minimum survival.
Though for the many thousands of blind who might eventually be restored to self-support,
it is indispensable that psychological independence be strengthened even while
they are temporarily economically dependent, this is an impossibility if, as
the means test requires, their scanty finances are under continuing review,
their meager consumption expenditures are scrutinized and judged, and they are
treated as chattels in custody without rights or powers of self-government rather
than as first-class citizens.

Under the welfare system
as it exists today, the blind man is treated as a congenital indigent who must
be firmly guided through the most routine and intimate details of his private
life by the insistent hand of the social worker. He is soon aware of the inferior
position into which he has been thrust. He comes to understand that he is the
victim of unique discrimination, that other groups in society—labor, farmers,
and industrialists—make no such sacrifice in personal liberty in receiving a
helping hand from government. And with this deepening realization his resentment
is compounded; his frustration, insecurity, and hostility intensified; his alienation
from self and society complete. He has been robbed of self-respect and the right
to resume a useful role in society. For freedom in the direction of one's personal
life is a fundamental democratic right, but it is also more than that—it is
a basic human need. The individual who is not permitted to fulfill that need
is sharply cut off from the rest of society; and, in the case of the blind aid
recipient, he becomes the captive of a system which was designed to make him
free.

The pervasive assumption
of incompetence also underlies and qualifies most rehabilitation work for the
blind. Case-finding is almost nonexistent; and counseling, guidance, training,
and placement are severely limited. All too frequently the end of this process
is graduation into a sheltered workshop. Sidetracked into this literal blind
alley by his training and his trainers, the blind client will find himself at
last at the dead end of the road.

If the blind person seeks
employment in private industry, in the public service, or in many of the common
trades, callings, and professions, he will find the door of opportunity shut
in his face. His own demonstration of ability will have little bearing on the
treatment he receives. Not his ability but his disability will hold the attention
of employers and governing boards; and not his disability but its false concomitant
of inability will determine his fate. All will agree that he is more to be pitied
than censured, but more to be censured than hired.

With the exclusion of the
rehabilitated man from industry, commerce, government, and profession, we have
come full circle. His emotional, economic, and social alienation is complete.
The energetic, self-reliant, and respected citizen of yesterday—before the onset
of blindness--is today a hopeless dependent of the state. The initial shock
of blindness had cast him into what by all scientific and rational standards
should have been a transient state of frustration and insecurity. But the general
public falsely supposed that he was permanently helpless and treated him accordingly.
Welfare agencies assumed that he was incapable of employment and built their
system on that premise. Rehabilitation workers considered him limited to the
economic back streets and led him there. Business and industry, government and
profession judged him before his appearance and found him wanting. And the blind
man himself soon became convinced that these attitudes were not worth fighting
and finally that they were true.

The four great rights of
liberty, equality, opportunity, and security have gained a firm foothold in
the ideological structure of American democracy. With respect to the blind,
however, as our analysis has shown, they are more honored in the breach than
in the observance. Excessive social-worker interference in the lives of blind
welfare clients constitutes a flagrant invasion of their liberty. A welfare
system which condemns the blind to perpetual surveillance while exacting no
such sacrifice from other aided groups deprives these citizens of their right
to equal treatment and equal protection of the laws. Inadequate welfare payments
far below the accepted level of existence deny the blind their right to security.
And, finally, the persistent refusal of both government and business to employ
blind workers—and of the welfare program to furnish the incentive to advancement—is
a clear violation of their right to opportunity.

The nation's blind, in
brief, are the victims of a double standard. On the one hand they are seduced
by the promise of independence and self-sufficiency emblazoned on the standard
of the four freedoms. On the other hand they are trampled under by the four
horsemen of pity, insecurity, overprotection, and rejection. The consequences
for the blind citizen of society's ambivalence are all too clear. Materially
he is denied the rewards and benefits held out by the four-fold ideal of freedom.
Psychologically he is thwarted by the discrepancy between the ideal and the
reality, immobilized by the polite restraint of an iron hand in a velvet glove—by
the gentlemen's agreement through which the harsh fact of exclusion is concealed
in an atmosphere of benevolence.

The ultimate goals of any
public policy designed to aid the blind must be, first, the emotional and economic
emancipation of as many blind citizens as possible; second, their reintegration
into society as full-fledged members and first-class citizens. Expressed more
simply, the twin objectives are independence and interdependence. The immediate
means of implementing these objectives require an extension to the blind of
those democratic rights and liberties through which they may be enabled to develop
and apply their capacities and talents, and to establish their prerogative to
equal membership in society. With these broad goals in mind, it is possible
to single out several specific areas in which reformist action not only is feasible
but may be expected to provide the stimulus for progressive change in all other
areas of policy and philosophy toward the blind.

First of all, the so-called
needs system must be abolished from both the law and the practice of social
welfare. As long as the unrealistic concept of need—an archaic residue of the
medieval Poor Laws—is retained on the statute books, the country of the blind
must bear on its portals the inscription: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter
here."

Moreover, the laws must
be further revised to permit more reasonable exemptions both of earnings and
property. What the blind applicant for aid is told in effect is: if you wish
to get on the dole, you must promise not to try to get off it. These restrictive
provisions effectively prevent the client from pulling himself up by his boot
straps, from working his way forward in the traditional American way out of
charity and subservience to independence and self-respect.

Second, the unjustifiable
practice of social-worker infiltration into the lives of blind aid recipients
must be radically reformed. The degrading assumption behind this procedure is
that the blind are incompetent to plan their lives and budgets; it is the clear
demonstration in practice of those dictionary definitions which suggest that
to be blind is to be lacking not so much in eyesight as in foresight and insight,
in mental vision and intellectual perception. The blind, it should be said,
do need intelligent social-worker guidance in the planning of independent careers;
they do not need the feeling of frustration and futility which are the product
of social-worker captivity.

This failure of the public
welfare program points up a deeper reform which is ultimately necessary to gain
equality of respect and treatment for the blind. It is the reinterpretation
of welfare itself away from the shackling philosophy of poor relief toward the
modern conception of rehabilitation. In the new orientation, public aid for
the employable blind must represent not a handout to the helpless but an encouragement
to self-help: not a permanent charity which perpetuates dependence but an immediate
incentive which invites independence. The American people have always believed
in the virtues of work and condemned idleness as a plague. From this strongly
rooted attitude have emerged both the gospel of self-help, of laissez-faire,
and more recently the right to work, the social obligation of full employment.
What can be said of a system which forbids to a substantial minority the possibility
of self-help and the right to work—except that, if it is not inhuman, it is
surely un-American.

The modern view of public
assistance for the blind as essentially reintegrative depends largely for its
success, of course, upon the simultaneous victory of this philosophy within
the sister field of vocational rehabilitation. Far too commonly rehabilitation
officers have shared the public prejudice which is typically expressed in rejection
and overprotection—rejection from the mainstream of competition and overprotection
in sheltered eddies of employment. What is needed is a profound revision of
the rehabilitation process on the principle that the blind are normal human
beings with a diversified occupational potential, possessed of the right and
the capacity to do a full job in our economy. The principle of normality must
infuse the entire program and strike the keynote of all rehabilitation efforts.
It requires prompt methods of case-finding to rescue the newly blinded from
apathy and isolation. It demands a new emphasis on counseling and training marked
by full faith in the abilities of the blind and genuine cooperation in developing
career plans. Above all it requires the thorough demolition of existing stereotypes
concerning blindness in the minds of the public in general and of employers
in particular. For ultimately, as we have suggested, it is this pervasive image
of the helpless blind—the traditional equation of physical disability with total
inability—which represents the greatest handicap imposed by blindness and constitutes
the discrimination without justification by which a quarter of a million Americans
are forbidden full citizenship in their society.

One concrete means of deterring
economic prejudice and safeguarding the interests of the blind, perhaps the
most urgently required of all, is that of adequate legislation. A very few states
have enacted laws which prohibit discrimination among applicants for public
employment because of physical handicap. But thus far the majority of states
have failed to take this step, while private industry has been left completely
free to perpetuate its prejudice against the sightless. There is immediate need
for iron-clad legislative provisions, on both state and federal levels, which
will guarantee to the blind a fair chance to demonstrate their abilities. If
employers are required by law to evaluate blind workers on their individual
merits rather than their class demerits, it is safe to predict that both industry
and the public will soon come to acknowledge the great contribution which the
blind men and women of America have been waiting to make to the nation's economy.

We the blind people in
the Federation ask that the blind be given the liberty of action which is the
groundwork of human dignity, the quality of treatment which is indispensable
to self-support, the security of mind and body which is necessary to their rehabilitation,
and the full degree of opportunity which will enable them to prove their economic
value and social worth. But neither the National Federation of the Blind nor
any other organization can itself grant the rights which will restore the blind
to a role of full and equal membership in our society. Only you, the people,
can finally decide whether the blind of America are deserving of a place in
the sun—or must be kept forever in a shelter in the shade.